She raced through the doorway, both men were submerged. She’d seen what Collins had done to Aaron. He was probably dead. No one could have survived that blow. She needed to save Johnson. She flipped both switches, reversing the boatlift. The cables tightened. Bubbles rose to the surface where Johnson went under, none where Aaron went down.
She grabbed a boat hook from the wall and frantically reached for Johnson’s cable. Probing to hook any part of him. Next to her, Aaron’s lifeless body rose out of the water. Johnson was thrashing like a fish below the surface. She grabbed his collar, pulled his head above water, and ripped the tape from his mouth.
Johnson coughed and spat water from his mouth, gasping for air.
“It’ll be okay, Johnson.” She reassured him. “Help is on the way.” Blood was oozing from his gouged-out eye socket.
He shook his head and coughed.
“Don’t talk.” She leaned closer. “Just take a—”
Collins popped out of the water with a knife in his hand. The blade slashed across her left cheek from her eye to her chin. She recoiled to avoid the killer’s grasp, headset falling into the water. Francesca grabbed her pistol, aimed, and fired into the water where Collins went under until her magazine was empty.
She fell back against the boathouse wall, cradling her cheek, sliding down the wall to a seated position. The pain was unlike anything she’d ever felt. So intense.
A soft buzzing sound caught her attention. She looked up and saw the wasp a foot in front of her.
“Matt. Help. Get help.” She said to the drone.
After two minutes she pulled herself to her feet, the drone matched her moves, and then it suddenly backed away and spun around. She turned and saw him.
A white blaze down the middle of his brown hair.
One blue eye and one brown eye.
CHAPTER 2
Jake Pendleton studied the camp through his AN/PVS-9 night vision goggles for the fourth October night in a row. He and his friend turned colleague, Gregg Kaplan, were manning an observation post overlooking an al Qaeda training camp run by Mustafa Bin Yasir.
The rock-strewn ridge had proven to be an ideal vantage point for intelligence gathering since the entire terrorist camp was visible from the perch with virtually no blind spots. Hidden between the mulgas, an evergreen eucalyptus shrub, Jake and Kaplan, a former U. S. Army Special Forces soldier, built short half-moon shaped walls out of rocks. Roughly eighteen inches high, the walls served as blinds where they monitored all movements within the camp. Patterns of the al Qaeda cell’s sentries, location of the communications tent, and all other vital information had been recorded and sent to an analyst at Langley.
Moonless nights offered additional cover, this phase of the moon chosen deliberately. Darkness had become Jake’s ally. A lesson he learned quickly as he adjusted to his newfound role with the CIA’s Clandestine Service. It reminded him of a phrase he’d heard Kaplan say several times — the motto of the 160th SOAR, Special Operations Aviation Regiment—Death waits in the dark. Jake preferred the comfort of darkness.
At the direction of CIA Director Scott Bentley, Jake and Kaplan were sent to the Outback to apprehend Yasir. According to Bentley, recent chatter had linked Yasir’s radical cell with plans for other terrorist attacks, potentially on U.S. soil. In cooperation with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, or ASIS, and the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, SAS, Jake and Kaplan recorded the nocturnal activities and patterns of Yasir and each member of the cell. Since the attack was planned for the middle of the night, every behavioral detail was noted.
Yasir had been implicated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks although no conclusive evidence linked him to the conspiracy. His association with terrorists known to have hijacked United States airliners and the recent intelligence community chatter had elevated Yasir near the top of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list.
“Do you think about her much, Gregg?” Jake whispered — undetectable at three meters.
Kaplan said nothing.
“Annie. Do you ever think about her?”
“Not as much as you might think.” Kaplan turned to Jake.
“Everything about that day in Savannah is etched in my mind. The blood. The carnage.” Jake was silent for a minute, then continued. “Not a day goes by I don’t think of Beth. I just can’t seem to let her go. How did you get over Annie?”
Kaplan removed his night vision goggles. “It’s easy to let go of something you never had.”
“I should never have left her. I should have been by her side. I’m the reason she got shot in the first place, then I just left her alone.”
“Bullshit, Jake, she wasn’t alone, she was in a hospital. With her parents. Recovering. How would you have known? How would anyone know? Quit feeling sorry for yourself. It’s time to let her go and move on.”
Jake lowered his head, feeling the pain like it happened yesterday, not six months ago. The day she died, Beth had been one month from her thirtieth birthday, three months before their wedding day. If he could go back, he would tell her not to come to Savannah to see him. Would have done anything to keep her away from there.
Jake turned and sat down against the rock wall, his back to the ledge. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out an energy bar. “Gregg, we’re wasting time. Let’s just set up this attack with the Aussies and get on with it.” He broke it into two pieces, handed half to Kaplan.
“Patience, Jake. We don’t want to rush things.”
“Rush things? We’ve been sitting on our asses up here for the past four nights. You call that rushing? It’s time for action.”
“You’re right." Kaplan said. "We’ve gathered all the intel we need."
Beyond the ridge where Jake and Kaplan were observing the al Qaeda camp laid the Buckshot Plains. Dawn’s first light revealed the vast, dry region, its red sand hills and desert grass stretching as far as the eye could see.
Nestled close to the cliff with its recently mounted camouflage netting, the terrorist camp had all but disappeared from satellite imagery. Aerial photos captured the camp prior to the netting and a CIA analyst mapped the camp and sent scaled diagrams to Jake and Kaplan.
In addition, an ASIS analyst built a 3D terrain model of the camp. It looked like an architectural student’s final project. Every detail of the terrorist camp was depicted with amazing accuracy.
From the ridge overlooking the camp he could distinguish details through the camouflage netting, verifying the accuracy of the CIA’s analyst’s original diagram, recording any changes, and relaying the intel back to the analyst for modification.
“Let’s go then.” Jake slipped his NVGs inside his desert camo shirt, stuck the remainder of the energy bar between his teeth, and crawled away from the ledge making his way toward the trail leading toward the SAS camp. Jake waited while Kaplan left instructions with the two SAS soldiers who came to relieve them.
Kaplan was a good friend. They had endured a lot together in a short amount of time. They met earlier that year under strange circumstances. He was an NTSB accident investigator from Atlanta and Kaplan an air traffic controller in Savannah, Georgia. He interviewed Kaplan during the investigation of an aircraft accident in Savannah. Kaplan was the last controller to communicate with the small jet prior to the crash that occurred a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. Proceeding with suspicion, Jake’s investigation turned deadly. It cost him the life of his fiancée Beth McAllister and left him with a burning emptiness.
Empty. And angry.